Welcome To The Access Unlimited Newsletter - Edition 56
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Access Unlimited is an email newsletter that provides free tips, help and information for skilled Microsoft Access users and related software disciplines.

Produced by Garry Robinson (known below as "Ed") from Sydney, Australia.

In this edition

Hide passwords as they are typed in
VBA Compiler Tip
Sell our software
The popular GOOD READING section once again.

FVBA Compiler/Coding Tip

If you type incorrect syntax into the VBA subroutine or function that you are working on, do you immediately get a message box that says Compile Error? Whilst this is handy in some cases, generally it is a nuisance that can be avoided. To fix this, open the VBA Environment (Alt F11), choose the menu Tools ~ Options and clear the Auto Syntax check box. While you are at it, make sure the Require Variable declaration check box is filled in.  Now when you enter incorrect syntax, the code will simply turn red and you won’t get the time wasting warning message box.

Opportunities For Selling Our Software

Would you like to sell vb123.com software? If so then check out this page
http://www.vb123.com/orders/resellers.htm

Wayne Phillips at everythingAccess.com has taken up the reseller challenge and now is selling our two most popular products at
http://www.everythingaccess.com/accesstoolshed.htm

http://www.everythingaccess.com/accessworkbench.htm

You will allow find some pretty good Access resource material if you look at the Access tutorials sections at Wayne’s web site.

GOOD READING

In the last Newsletter, “Ed” messed up the link to the page that showed you how to graphically display percentages on forms and reports.
Click to go to the Microsoft article

Transfer data from one database to another – SQL server tools featured.
http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.php/3507171

Snippet Editor for VB
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/downloads/2005/tools/snippeteditor/

How do you get a list of all the forms in your database whilst coding in Access VBA environment. This page tells you how.
www.vb123.com/toolshed/02_docs/classyforms.htm

How to setup unbound forms
http://www.accessdatabasetips.com/forms.html

A very good page on avoiding Access corruption
http://allenbrowne.com/ser-25.html

A look at creating and editing Excel and Word documents in VB.Net
http://www.codeguru.com/columns/Experts/article.php/c9733/

Setting up a global connection string for ADO to save on multiple connections
http://www.fmsinc.com/free/newtips/Access/accesstip32.asp

Test for SQL Injection vulnerabilities
http://info.101com.com/default.asp?id=15245

Danny Lesandrini demonstrates different ways of executing SQL Statements in VBA Code http://nl.internet.com/ct.html?rtr=on&s=1,1mnk,1,3yyi,ha9k,39gr,amjy

Reinstall Access 97 on a computer that has Access 2000
http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/assistance/HA011383311033.aspx

If you want to 'clean' an Office 2002/2003 document before sending it out, download the Remove Hidden Data tool from Microsoft
Download from Microsoft  

That popular IP phone company Skype is on its way to profitability
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=electionsNews&storyID=8600978

Server and Domain Isolation Using IPsec and Group Policy
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/topics/architectureanddesign/ipsec/default.mspx

A simple chat program packaged as a VBA project
http://nl.internet.com/ct.html?rtr=on&s=1,1n44,1,gy6j,4mwi,39gr,amjy

Edit An Excel File In MS Flexgrid Before Importing Into SQL Server http://nl.internet.com/ct.html?rtr=on&s=1,1n44,1,l6hz,enzs,39gr,amjy

Smart Tag programming for those readers with customers in the fast lane.
Microsoft Link     Ed is personally very happy with Google desktop for this sort of task.

WRAPPING THIS EDITION UP

Whether you work a big organization or work for yourself, IT workers need to be aware of and promote the reduction of software and data that isn’t being used. As a general rule of thumb, you should spend 5-10% of your time on cleaning up, backing up and (practicing) retrieval tasks. This link illustrates that the problem can occur in big databases and with the explosion of data that is occurring in all areas of IT, clean-up sessions are something IT workers have to take to heart.

So how do you do clean up an Access database?

One thing you need to do is find out what your users are doing. The best way to find out is to log what forms and reports the users are opening in your database. This is discussed in my book and is also included in the download materials that come with The Toolshed. Once you work out the objects are being used least, you then are in a position to decide if there are any unimportant of your database that can be archived. Note: The one thing you don’t want to do is rely on is discussions with users as they will generally make unsubstantiated claims about the value or lack of value of different parts of a database (or any software really). Far better to approach clean-ups with facts than hearsay.

Another good way to downsize your database is to export the objects to standalone files external of the database. In the free download chapter of my book, I demonstrate how you can create XML files of all the tables and text files of all the objects like forms, reports and modules. If you then sort these by file size, you will have a pretty good idea of the space consuming objects in your database. Then you can look at the big space consumers in the database and attempt to clean up what really takes up the space.

Garry Robinson - Software Consultant and Author
GR-FX Pty Limited
Sydney, Australia.
Ph +61 2 9665 2871 Fax +61 2 9665 8448
Software Resources http://vb123.com/

 --- The end of this edition of Access Unlimited ---

PS Don’t forget Garry’s BRAND NEW Workbench 4… Shutdown your database, send messages to users, colored icons lots of other relevant stuff.

http://www.vb123.com/workbench/

Click on this button to read the previous edition of Access Unlimited 
Published  2005-05

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